The American Civil Liberties Union is defending the executive editor of an unknown blog and criticizing Taylor Swift after the pop star’s lawyers threatened PopFront with legal action if the editor didn’t take down a post she’d written that draws comparisons between the singer and Adolf Hitler, multiple outlets are reporting.
“Taylor lords over an army of models from a podium, akin to what Hitler had in Nazis Germany,” Meghan Herning wrote in part. “The similarities are uncanny and unsettling.”
She continued:
“Her lyrics are like an affirmation for everything the alt-right has been feeling for years: oppressed, afraid to come out, and made to look like a fool,” Herning wrote. “And now that they feel empowered, it befits the movement to have a white, blonde, conservative pop star that has no doubt been “bullied” by people of color in the media, singing their feelings out loud. And with a president that openly addresses hate groups and justifies racial hatred, this is not a time for neutrality.”
The Telegraph reports Swift’s lawyers sent a take-down letter to Herning, arguing that the post is “replete with demonstrable and offensive falsehoods which bear no relation to reality or the truth about Ms. Swift.”
Herning could potentially face litigation if she doesn’t remove the post.
“It appears to be a malicious attack against Ms. Swift that goes to great lengths to portray Ms. Swift as some sort of white supremacist figurehead, which is a baseless fiction masquerading as fact and completely misrepresents Ms. Swift,” the warning continues.
In defense of Herning, the ACLU asserted that neither Herning nor PopFront will comply with the request.
“The blog post is a mix of core political speech and critical commentary; it discusses current politics in this country, the recent rise of white supremacy, and the fact that some white supremacists have apparently embraced Ms. Swift, along with a critical interpretation of some of Ms. Swift’s music, lyrics, and videos,” the ACLU wrote. They went a step further, using Swift’s own lyrics against her. “Criticism is never pleasant, but a celebrity has to shake it off, even if the critique may damage her reputation.”
Indeed, even if Swift doesn’t want to be embraced by white supremacists or neo-Nazis, she continues to be. A Daily Stormer post called her “a pure Aryan goddess” and “secretly a Nazi” while Breitbart recently and repeatedly tweeted lyrics from Swift’s new song “Look What You Made Me Do.”
I’ve got a list of names and yours is in red, underlined
I check it once, then I check it twice, oh! https://t.co/kLlH7PJDwd— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) August 25, 2017
Incidentally, that’s the same song Herning pulled visual comparisons to Hitler from.
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